Canoe, WH ’10, a found-wood sculpture by R.L. Croft at Occoquan Creek in Prince William County, Va. See a local story on another work here. Or better yet, visit Croft’s website. (Image courtesy of R.L. Croft.)

Between a Cross and a Hard Place: Excellent piece on the Wojnarowicz controversy (with hstorical context) in ARTnews.

“Thus, my five-year long trial ended without judgment—neither condemnation nor vindication, a reality hard to accept, given the distorted and slanderous allegations against me.” The Getty’s former antiquities curator Marion True, on the ambivalent end to the charges filed against her in an Italian court for allegedly conspiring to receive illegally excavated antiquities. Read her full statement here. (L.A. Times.)

If there’s one thing that abounds in Sicily – more than orange groves and vineyards – it’s concrete. True to stereotype, there are cement plants all over this Mafia-riddled island. And its once-beautiful capital, Palermo, is rife with hideous concrete buildings that hover next to Baroque palazzi. (These soulless structures are often constructed using pilfered funds intended to restore buildings bombed in WWII). Amid all of these mind-numbing edifices, we found what is considered the largest work of land art in Europe. And guess what? It’s made of the same poor-quality concrete as the buildings in Palermo.

Only here, it works. Titled Grande Cretto, by postwar Italian artist Alberto Burri, the piece commemorates the destruction of the Western Sicilian town of Gibellina in a catastrophic 1968 earthquake. In 1980, roughly twelve years after residents rebuilt their town 18 km away, Burri covered the hillside town’s streets and ruined buildings– an area roughly 900 x 1200 feet and about 5′ in height, with white concrete. The streets look like the crackle pattern on Burri’s fabled paintings, only you can walk through these. Or skate through them. (Not to give anyone any ideas.) But if you were to, no one would know: it’s in the middle of nowhere, a two hour drive from Palermo – and just a short stop from Castellammare del Golfo (birthplace of Joe Bonanno and Frank Stallone, Sr., father of Sly), where you can go for a swim at one of the pristine beaches at the nearby Zingaro nature preserve and then feast on a plate of pasta with sardines, pine nuts and raisins.

A Richard Neutra building in Newport Beach, Calif. has been spared the wrecking ball. For now.

The jury that evaluated Zaha Hadid’s design for the London Olympics seriously overbudget aquatic center warned about its cost and the functionality of its design when making its recommendation to Olympics organizers, who overlooked these little details because they liked all the pretty lines.